Workplace norms in accounting firms keep evolving year after year with the introduction of new business processes, technologies, HR policies, etc., aimed towards the betterment of businesses and employees.
Changes like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), open offices, free fitness plans, remote working, etc. are aimed towards one goal – increased employee productivity. One platform that makes all of it possible for employees is cloud hosting.
A recent survey shows that people who adopted cloud hosting ended up saving money.
This new concept of eliminating local hardware and IT infrastructure and transferring the business over the cloud is the latest buzzword in the world of accounting.
It has made accounting processes faster and more precise, along with reducing human errors.
QuickBooks cloud hosting refers to installing the QuickBooks on the cloud servers of a third-party provider. It is becoming the new bonafide business strategy for accounting firms across the USA.
In recent years, firms have seen a measurable impact of hosting their QuickBooks on the cloud on their business.
If you host your QuickBooks Desktop, it will be accessible via a web browser at any time from any place in the world through an internet connection.
There is no change in the UI. You’ll get your favorite QuickBooks Desktop, which will be more advanced and faster. Such software is perfect for firms that rely on remote or traveling workers.
Let’s understand how QuickBooks cloud hosting increases productivity:
1. Remote working
It is not necessary to be on office premises to complete your accounting tasks and access your QuickBooks account. Also, your accounting skills do not depend upon your work location.
It is all about getting things done (regardless of the location). But such benefits are not possible if you have installed QuickBooks on your local desktop or laptop.
Remote working has also become the new normal during the coronavirus pandemic. If your firm cannot provide its employees with it, you are putting their and their families’ lives in danger.
QuickBooks cloud hosting will allow your workforce to access the data from the comfort of their homes at any time.
Modern accounting firms are also leveraging this technology to expand their teams and hire the best talents from across the globe.
2. Boosted data security
When you store sensitive QuickBooks data in the local servers, there is always a chance of losing the data – loss of the local storage, data leaks, or unauthorized access, etc.
The possibility of such issues will always remain. Lately, companies like Facebook have encountered data breaches, which proved to be very expensive.
Facebook’s stocks crashed, and the company lost millions of dollars. Thus, data security is a must for every company.
When your QuickBooks data is stored in the cloud, the cloud providers protect it using the latest data encryption methods, firewalls, and antivirus systems.
Also, in case of a data breach, the data is easily accessible and can be recovered.
3. Better collaboration
Accounting firms have gone global – they serve clients from multiple countries and have teams spread across the globe.
Such a vast diversity of clients and employees makes it difficult for them to collaborate and work efficiently.
Also, most email hosting services cannot process files more than a few MB.
Such scenarios create a communication gap as the employees cannot share files with each other.
QuickBooks cloud hosting provides everyone with a flexible yet powerful working solution.
A Forbes survey revealed that collaboration using the cloud helped users execute their tasks faster and better.
With a cloud-hosted QuickBooks solution, employees are better connected to each other and to the clients (in different parts of the world).
Everyone has access to the same information, and any new changes are reflected in real-time. As a result, team collaboration improves, which leads to improved productivity.
4. Automatic upgrades
Do you force your IT team to update the latest version of your accounting solution?
Do you feel that updating third-party add-ons (and there are plenty when we talk about QuickBooks) is a tedious task?
Your IT team can be caught up in a vicious never-ending cycle of upgrading your locally installed QuickBooks and/or its integrations. Thus, they cannot perform their duties with full efficiency.
If you are hosting your QuickBooks Desktop on the cloud, your hosting provider will ensure that you do not have to concentrate on software updates and as it will deliver them automatically without any hassles.
The users do not have to worry about software maintenance or any updates, helping them utilize their time in tasks that generate revenue.
5. Less IT infrastructure
Maintaining a locally installed QuickBooks solution takes a huge IT infrastructure, time, energy, and money if you do it on your own.
You’ll also have to deal with multiple storage devices such as hard disks, DVDs, manage all the data, and bearing the cost of all such hardware equipment.
Moreover, there is an additional need to purchase extra infrastructure if you run out of storage.
QuickBooks cloud hosting reduces such bottlenecks and allows your firm to conduct business operations without worrying about a physical IT infrastructure.
Your QuickBooks cloud hosting provider offers you with the infrastructure in state-of-the-art data centers to install your QuickBooks and store your data.
Hence, you can use the QuickBooks solution without worrying about the storage and IT infrastructure needs.
6. Disaster recovery and business continuity
What would you do if your office premise is hit by an earthquake, fire, data breach, or any such disaster? Would you be able to access your QuickBooks solution?
Any disaster can result in inconvenience and halt your business operations, making your workforce unable to work. Eventually, you may end with substantial financial losses along with a non-productive workforce.
Hosting Quickbooks on the cloud offers uninterrupted business continuity. Most cloud hosting providers offer regular data backups across multiple data centers.
In case your firm is hit by a disaster, you’ll still be able to access your accounting data and use QuickBooks without any difficulty.
This way, your workforce will still be able to continue its operations by accessing the data remotely, and your business will flourish despite the crisis.
7. Easy scalability
If you have a locally installed QuickBooks, what do you do if your system becomes slow?
Do you increase its processing power?
But is the new processing power fully utilized once your system is upgraded?
No. Also, scaling up the processing power or data storage capacity doesn’t happen all of a sudden.
All such things take time – there is a process that needs to be followed that may involve taking multiple approvals.
Your workforce will have no option other than waiting for things to get sorted.
On the other hand, a cloud-hosted QuickBooks is easily scalable. It boosts employee productivity through efficient utilization of resources.
It also helps you handle business fluctuations; you get resources as per your needs.
For instance, during the tax season, you can hire accountants on a contractual basis. The cloud-hosted solution will come to your aid to provide instant resources, and you can quickly scale down when needed.
8. Easy management of data
Modern accounting firms make use of advanced technologies like Big Data, along with a robust QuickBooks solution.
And managing and processing loads of data is a hefty task for in-house data centers. Eventually, your workforce spends more time in managing and analyzing datasets than they should.
When you host your QuickBooks solution on the cloud, the servers use HPC (High-Performance Computing) servers.
This makes it easier and faster to handle huge datasets, making the employees gain more insights in less time, and boosting the productivity of the organization.
9. Accelerate workflows
Time is money in today’s fast-paced world. Everything happens at a lightning-fast pace that when simple tasks take too long, employees feel that they are becoming less productive.
For instance, your employees might spend a lot of time importing and exporting data from Excel to QuickBooks.
If you host QuickBooks on the cloud, such manual and time-consuming processes are automated with the help of third-party add-ons as all the data is stored at a central repository.
QuickBooks cloud hosting has proven to be a time-saving method for firms and a track record of helping firms by boosting productivity and cutting down the time required to complete a project.
10. Integrate better tools
Finding the right tools that function well with your locally installed solution is a tedious and time-consuming task.
It is a hit and trial method to find which tools ease your business operations and boost organizational productivity.
Also, you have to purchase third-party add-ons to see their impact on your business operations.
Once you implement the cloud strategy, hundreds of third-party add-ons can be instantly integrated with your QuickBooks solution.
This way, you can cheaply test multiple add-ons and judge what suits your business operations.
Conclusion: QuickBooks cloud hosting
The accounting environment is becoming more and more complicated these days.
With the introduction of QuickBooks cloud hosting to your accounting process, your employees can stay above the chaos and reach the desired productivity levels.
It is a great way to give your accounting business a complete makeover and stay ahead of the competition.
Sharad Acharya is a technical writer at Ace Cloud Hosting. He loves to research the latest technologies and has written articles on the cloud, virtualization, and security. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.
